The real pursuit is UNIX. as it is. Plain, simple, efficient, Good. I'll raise a point about a 2 services provided by NetBSD and my thoughts on basically the same thing in both.
We'll start with, my personal current seemingly obsession, and I'm truly sorry to keep bringing it up, but here we are again. Maybe if we discuss a little it will put things at ease.
/usr/libexec/httpd:
Excellent in concept and execution. A Small, Simple, Fast process. As it should be.
I think things could be simplified, and obviously tightened. I'd like to get to know and understand the state of things, but I digress, let's get to the point.
First, I raised the issue of some (nonsense) denial of service attack regarding connections of long duration. A time limit was put on the connections. I'm sorry. This was nonsense, and basically distructive hacker BS. I think the timer should be removed. Emphasis on strong and simple. If you want more, move to Apache. In My Humble Opnion of course, but for what it's worth, I feel strongly about it and am truly apologetic. I'm embarassed by the 90s "hacker" nonsense.
Anyway, on to my (humbly) UNIXish thoughts on this. The user home directory.
This is the request.
GET /~babylove/index.html
This is translated to retrieve the file at ~babylove/index.html. Basically this is nonsense and essentially useless. Ok, user's web pages. (nobody cares). I'm exausted so long story short, this request should retrieve DOCUMENTROOT/~babylove/index.html, which 404 yadda likely. I'd like to figure out how to communicate how strongly I feel about this, but essentially, Strong, Simple, Efficient.
Further, I'd like to forget chroot(2). chdir(2?) to DOCROOT, and allow to traverse up the directory tree.
Illustrated:
GET /../../etc/rc.conf.local
Given a DOCROOT of /var/www, will retrieve /etc/rc.conf.local. I like this. Simple. Efficient. If you seek added precaution, persue Apache. To much ticks for precaution that I (nor you) need. Nobody does that nonsense anymore and you won't find anything anyway. Permissions are tight. (list of users -> password cracker -> don't really care. (And especially appretiation for blocklistd)). It's basically impossible to crack passwords -> "Just Distribute, etc." -> persue Apache if you need this.
Instead of using .htpasswd for a list of user accounts and passwords for access to certain directories, I think the httpd distributed should pull from user accounts from the system (passwd). Simple. except you need to figure out how to confirm a password from an unprivileged account -> "but local users can then crack against passwd in super-fast light-speed now" -> don't care -> persue apache.
fix that scandir(3) thing or I'll make malloc(2) return NULL like it should ;) sorry, half-musing, but whatever.
Basically the same opinion on FTP. User accounts are sent to the FTPROOT and can traverse up the tree. I like FTPROOT/bin, but whatever. Basically the same opinions here. It's basically the same service anyway. maybe chroot(2) to FTPROOT is in order here. But I don't really want User Accounts directed to home directories. This won't fly, I see now, because of the marketable possibility of a Web Hosting Service Provider (but I don't really want that either). So I still like this point.
That's basically it, but 2 more points to close.
I don't want a Super-Configurable system. I want a tight system. I like minimal. I don't want super-configurable. Too much Clock required.
Also, Absolutely no Offence in any way attended. I respect the tie to UCBerk, but I do not desire an Academic system in any way. When I was in school, they used Solaris to introduce you, and I, personally, for whatever it is not worth, do not want NetBSD in there anyway. I don't see the future in Academia, however, if the SUS were taught and NetBSD were branded/certified compliant/conformant/whatever, I think it would increase the footprint, and put you actually further in Academia.
Sorry for the ramblings. I'm exausted, but I do see the light at the end of the Tunnel.
Sincerely and Truly Yours,
Justin Allen Parrott
PS I look forward to any and all comments on or off list.